Notes for Azed 2,678

There are usually one or two points of interest in an Azed puzzle, and here we pick them out for comment. Please feel free to add your own questions or observations on any aspect of the puzzle (including clues not listed below) either by using the comment form at the bottom of the page or, if would prefer that your question/comment is not publicly visible, by email.

Azed 2,678 Plain

Difficulty rating: (1.5 / 5)

I made a slow start to this one (perhaps distracted by the two slices of Toastie posing coquettishly in the toast rack), but once I got going very steady progress was made, helped by the fifteen clues involving anagrams. Overall, I felt that it was below the middle of the difficulty range, perhaps a little further below than I have rated it [update: based on feedback, I have reduced the difficulty rating from 2.0 to 1.5]. Anyway, it was an enjoyable solve.

My thanks to Hazel for pointing out the typo in the clue for 27d – ‘cold’ should read ‘could’ (which is what I assumed that it said when I solved the clue). Should have gone to Specsavers? I did – perhaps that’s the problem.

Setters’ Corner: This week I’m going to look at clue 32a, “Bony bits cooked in the English manner? (4)”. The wordplay consists of a single element, ‘cooked in the English manner?’, which leads to a (1,2) French expression meaning ‘cooked in the manner of’ plus the usual abbreviation for ‘English’. But this doesn’t actually mean ‘cooked in the English manner’, so in fairness to solvers Azed has added a question mark to indicate that it is somewhat fanciful. Azed wrote a short piece in a slip about the different uses of question marks in clues:

“Apart from clues which are constructed as questions (often as or as part of & lits) to which the answer is the solution, there is the ‘linking’ question mark, as in ‘Wine? Libertine imbibes gallons’ (ROUGE), where what follows it is the cryptic indicator of what precedes it. Here the question mark seems a more appropriate punctuation mark, than, say, a dash or a colon. Then there is the occasion when the clue writer is indicating something rather fanciful or not strictly literal as the cryptic part, e.g. ‘Green paradise? Adam’s description after arrival of Eve maybe’ (ECOSTATE). A further usage (one of the commonest, I’d say) indicates that the clue writer is defining a general term by a specific example of it, as in ‘Pay out from urn excited Murray’ (UNREEL), where ‘Murray’ (more strictly ‘murray’) is an example of, not a synonym for, ‘eel’. Generally, I feel the need to add a question mark wherever I consider that I have used wording that doesn’t pinpoint meaning exactly but is still a rough indication that will be perfectly clear to the solver once the clue is understood and solved.”

I don’t think I can improve upon that.

Across

1a Veteran maybe long after MOD outs possibly, about 50? (12, 2 words)
A four-letter word meaning ‘[to] long’ follows an anagram (‘possibly’) of MOD OUTS containing (‘about’) the Roman numeral representing 50. The answer is split (3,9).

13a Second mowing unrefined, before end of autumn (4)
A three-letter word for ‘unrefined’, as sugar might be, is followed by the last letter (‘end’) of AUTUMN.

14a What’s ground etc I found in mill – it may be good for the heart (9)
An anagram (‘ground’) of ETC I is contained by (‘found in’) a word for a very basic stone mill. As a prime example of how things I learnt years ago remain firmly fixed in my head while far more interesting or important things that I learnt last year have simply vanished, I still remember a sentence from a book I read in junior school about the Middle Ages – “Most villeins kept a quern.” I guess it’s all the stuff like that which has almost filled my non-volatile memory, such that just about everything else gets lost whenever I’m rebooted.

16a Craggy piece: ma has this one for cheese (5)
If you put MA in front of the solution and ONE after it, the name of a cheese will emerge.

20a Evil to terminate when it returns, in deep (7)
A three-letter word meaning ‘to terminate’ is reversed (‘when it returns’) inside a word for ‘deep’, as a voice might be.

23a Islanders from Man welcoming group from the east (7)
A three-letter word often indicated by ‘group’ is reversed (‘from the east’) in a word for a man – this last word has been capitalized in the clue, as required by the surface reading, something which is considered acceptable if not particularly desirable; the removal of an initial capital from a word, eg putting ‘nice’ when you mean ‘Nice’, is strictly verboten.

29a Depression overcoming one farming settlement (5)
A nicely deceptive definition here, where ‘farming’ is a participle rather than a noun. The wordplay is a charade of a three-letter word which appears regularly in cryptics, most often indicated by ‘pass’ but also ‘defile’ or ‘depression’, and a two-letter preposition with many meanings. Whether ‘overcoming’ is one of these is open to question – I think something like ‘settled over’ would be preferable, while ‘concerning’ would be uncontentious.

33a Celebrated dynasty (4)
There are two possible past tenses of the verb meaning ‘celebrate’ to choose from, and two possible spellings for the Chinese dynasty, but only one word that ticks both boxes.

Down

2d Catching upcoming signal, I heal ma suffering cancerous condition (10)
Here we have an anagram (‘suffering’) of I HEAL MA containing (‘catching’) a reversal (‘upcoming’) of the sort of signal which actors react to and snooker players wield.

6d Glutted, I ate away, placed at table (3)
A seven-letter word meaning ‘glutted’ has the consecutive letters I ATE removed (‘away’).

8d Bass dispensed by pub, can I mixed in soothing tincture (6)
The usual abbreviation for ‘bass’ is omitted from (‘dispensed by’) a three-letter word for a pub, which is followed by an anagram (‘mixed’) of CAN I. I’m not convinced by ‘dispensed’ (rather than ‘dispensed with’) to indicate deletion.

9d Solid figure that fool’s enveloped in impressive chest (7)
If you come across a solid figure in a puzzle, it’s a good bet that it’ll be the same sort that breeds rabbit-like at the side of motorways and other main vehicle routes; here one of the usual suspects for a fool is ‘enveloped in’ one.

10d The misguided learn information about zilch to write at greater length about (9, 2 words)
An anagram (‘misguided’) of LEARN is followed by a three-letter slang term for information containing the usual single-character representation of ‘nothing’ (‘zilch’), with the solution dividing (7,2). I’m a tad uneasy about that ‘The’ at the beginning – without it, the clue doesn’t read very well, but it does suggest we should be looking for something specific, when there are many possible rearrangements of LEARN. In effect the clue is saying ‘The anagram of learn…’, when what it means is ‘An anagram of learn…’.

15d Lizzie was champing at the bit for Rev. William in chequer design (10)
The Rev. William is William Archibald Spooner, and the answer is a spoonerism of another diminutive form of ‘Elizabeth’ (often associated with Porgy) and a word meaning ‘champed’, the past tense of a by-form of the word ‘chew’, which which it shares all but one letter.

25d Lout interrupts skill upsetting team of three (6)
A three-letter informal word for a ‘crass-witted, inferior person’ is contained by a reversal (‘upsetting’) of a word for ‘skill’.

(definitions are underlined)